How Israel is helping India in agriculture

India and Israel are set to jointly develop new crop varieties and share post harvest technologies following the success of the 10-year-old Indo-Israeli Agriculture Project whose accomplishments include growing cherry tomatoes in Haryana, rejuvenating mango orchards in Maharashtra and demonstrating to Indian farmers the effectiveness of state-of-the-art irrigation technologies.

For a country like Israel where 60% of the area is desert, exporting high-value farm produce like mangoes and avocados is a matter of pride, whereas for India, among the largest food producers globally, the challenge is to counter the effects of erratic rainfall, raise productivity and use water efficiently.

So, it was with the objective of sharing best practices and technical knowledge from Israel that the agriculture cooperation project was launched in 2008. The implementing partners for the project are the National Horticulture Mission under the agriculture ministry, MASHAV, Israel’s agency for international development cooperation, and Indian state governments which help set up centres of excellence as per their local needs.


“There is a lot of focus on drip irrigation and how to design better farms by using canopy management and use of improved irrigation and fertigation technologies.Each centre showcases a range of greenhouses to farmers depending on their needs and capabilities. A unique focus is to teach farmers the language of irrigation - when to irrigate and by how much - to increase water use efficiency